Always baffled me how little commercial sense HNers had when I was growing up and reading this forum.
It's as if no one taught them -- or they just don't have the sense for it? -- that a startup is just a vehicle to make money. There's nothing special about it. You can make lots of money without a "startup." You can make lots of money doing many different things even without a business entity. It's just an abstraction for linguistic convenience.
My biggest wakeup was finding people much less educated and much less intellectually gifted and much less socioeconmically privileged making a lot more money than what could be considered their betters in more prestigious and, on the surface, well remunerated professions.
If you don't want to make money, don't go into business. Stay at your job and grind a career out. If you have the desire to make money, your senses will naturally sharpen as you use them more to achieve that end. Otherwise, if you go and "build a startup" for any other reason than making money you will fail barring extraneous circumstances.
Baffling that this isn't common sense, really. But my fault. I keep forgetting a professional forum is just a proverbial water cooler, where you get to see a wide mix of people in your profession -- and all the different backgrounds, values, ideas, and ways of seeing the world -- most of which are continuous works in progress that culminate only at death.
That is what's taught in many start up schools, for good reason. A startup can't ignore money without great luck.
However, it's not actually true. Lots of people start companies to make things better in some way, rather than to make bank. Some of them make bank regardless. Many businesses just tick along, but don't care about 'success' as determined by yacht size/botox per square inch/'status'.
> if you go and "build a startup" for any other reason than making money you will fail barring extraneous circumstances.
The idea that motivating people by money is the only or even best option is a major propaganda point in the class war (and quite silly if you think about it).
> Always baffled me how little commercial sense HNers had when I was growing up and reading this forum.
How long have you been reading HN? How have you felt the "HNers" w.r.t. nose-for-commerciality (and along whatever other dimension you think is relevant) change over time?
It's as if no one taught them -- or they just don't have the sense for it? -- that a startup is just a vehicle to make money. There's nothing special about it. You can make lots of money without a "startup." You can make lots of money doing many different things even without a business entity. It's just an abstraction for linguistic convenience.
My biggest wakeup was finding people much less educated and much less intellectually gifted and much less socioeconmically privileged making a lot more money than what could be considered their betters in more prestigious and, on the surface, well remunerated professions.
If you don't want to make money, don't go into business. Stay at your job and grind a career out. If you have the desire to make money, your senses will naturally sharpen as you use them more to achieve that end. Otherwise, if you go and "build a startup" for any other reason than making money you will fail barring extraneous circumstances.
Baffling that this isn't common sense, really. But my fault. I keep forgetting a professional forum is just a proverbial water cooler, where you get to see a wide mix of people in your profession -- and all the different backgrounds, values, ideas, and ways of seeing the world -- most of which are continuous works in progress that culminate only at death.